Up Next
Way back in Bahrain, after a first grand prix in charge of Haas had been a bittersweet one, Formula 1’s newest team boss Ayao Komatsu laughed midway through a question about Nico Hulkenberg.
“Yes, thank you!” he said, interrupting The Race when our question about the potential impact Hulkenberg could have this season touched on how the team’s chronic race pace problems meant his qualifying heroics had been “pointless” in 2023.
As politely sarcastic as his gratitude was, Komatsu agreed with the point. He was one of the most honest critics of his team’s performance. And he knew the real intent of the question. Hulkenberg was a wasted asset last year. How much of a weapon could he prove to be if Haas’s race pace issues really had been solved over the winter?
“Huge,” was Komatsu’s reply. And how the 2024 season has shown that.
Hulkenberg actually blew his and Haas’s chance of scoring points at the first attempt in 2024 on that evening in Bahrain, clumsily tripping over Lance Stroll’s Aston Martin and breaking his front wing. But since then he has justified Komatsu’s belief in him several times over.
Hulkenberg has made the difference on many occasions this year. Yes, he’s peaked with back-to-back sixth-place finishes in the last two grands prix, but all that’s done is bring attention to the level he’s been on for much of 2024 – it’s just before that it was manifesting itself in consistently strong performances that were either netting unlikely points finishes or falling just short.
Within this is probably a misunderstanding of Hulkenberg’s season: that the Haas is now just about good enough for him to hang on to mega grid positions he gains through his prodigious qualifying pace.
That’s rooted in his historically excellent one-lap performance and a past trend of using his tyres too aggressively, which accelerates slipping back from a position his car cannot maintain anyway over a full race distance.
But…that is not how Hulkenberg is excelling in 2024. His average grid position is only 12th. He has fewer Q3 appearances (six) than Fernando Alonso and Yuki Tsunoda (seven). The Haas is the seventh-fastest car this year, and yet Hulkenberg is averaging a top-10 finishing position (and almost single-handedly propping up its championship position - seventh, right behind RB, and clear of Alpine/Williams for now).
That’s why Hulkenberg has featured in the top 10 of The Race’s drivers rankings eight times in 12 races, and the top five on five occasions. It’s also why, at least privately, many rival teams are in awe of Hulkenberg’s constant overachievement.
He is performing at such a high level this year that he is tantamount to a permanent rolling upgrade – every weekend, his consistently high performance level in a fairly erratic midfield is effectively giving Haas a tenth or two extra in F1’s ultra-close fight.
That has massive value. Less than 0.6% covers the average of supertime of five teams in the midfield (Aston Martin, RB, Haas, Alpine and Williams), and Haas has the least erratic pace deviations in that group, which is why it has been consistently close to scoring points all season.
The car having good peaks and few major weaknesses obviously plays a part in that but so does having a lead driver consistently getting the most out of it: Hulkenberg’s scored points at six events this year, and has five 11th-place finishes in grands prix on top of that. If F1’s mooted new points system down to 12th was already active then Hulkenberg would have scored in all but two races (Bahrain, and Haas’s Monaco nightmare).
Every year for the past few years, the F1 midfield has had an exponential increase in ‘this is tighter than ever’ discourse.
Now, with four clear top teams that should be locking out the top eight positions, the rest should be feeding off scraps in ninth and 10th. Back when Aston Martin started the season closer to the lead group than the midfield, there was a crude joke among those stragglers that they were fighting over who could try to beat Lance Stroll to the final point.
The point is that theoretically, if everyone performed at their maximum, there are very few points on offer for ‘the rest’ - and Haas wouldn't be getting a look in. And yet Hulkenberg has 22 points to his name, with his Austria and Silverstone hauls helping him leapfrog RB pair Tsunoda and Daniel Ricciardo, and pulling him close to Stroll’s tally.
Ultimately, every team in the midfield has a lead driver (or two decent drivers) who can perform to a very high level on any given weekend. This is F1 after all. Whether it’s Alonso, Tsunoda, Ricciardo, Alex Albon, the Alpine pair of Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon – you can see great peaks wherever you look.
But have any of them replicated that as much as Hulkenberg, and backed that up with as high a level of consistency outside of the peaks? No. And that’s a key reason Haas is having such a good season.
It’s finally firing its “huge” weapon, having spent 2023 shooting blanks.
